When will my kid learn to sleep through the night?

[Buff]

My kid doesn't sleep well through the night (he's 2 and a half years). Ever since birth. People say, oh, he'll grow out of it. Shyeah, when pigs fly out of my butt!

We've tried everything that we can think of

No daytime naps... makes things worse at bedtime.
Shorter daytime naps... see above
Earlier bedtime... nope.
let him play until he's ready to drop... worst. idea. ever.
gave him a bottle... now he's hooked on it and we've got another issue to deal with

He just lays in bed singing, playing etc. until he gets bored and then he cries and cries and cries. It usually takes him 2 hours to get to sleep from the time we lay him down in bed... and then middle of the night hits and he's awake again... crying, obviously. Usually he'll go right back to sleep but he needs some consoling which requires one of us to get up.

The odd thing is when he goes for a nap, he's all for it, somewhat excited, but at bed time he dreads it and and dreads it worse the more tired he is. he does have the odd stretch where he'll sleep through the night, sometimes several nights in a row, but one bad night and we go on a long stretch of bad nights.

What tricks do people use to get their kids to go to bed... and sleep the night through?

[habernac]

I guess we've been lucky. My son is 2, he goes to bed very willingly (naps are another issue altogether....) He has always slept in his own room, never with us. We wanted him to get used to not needing us around at bed time. He wakes up once in awhile from a bad dream or whatever, but other than being upset that mom isn't home as much (she recently went back to work full time), he's been great. We weaned him off the bottle about 9 months ago.

Try reading to him maybe? Just kind of wind down slowly before bed, that's one of the things we do as well, seems to have worked pretty good.

[looooob]

I know not everyone agree with this approach, but have you truly tried a version of 'crying it out' (including the middle of the night wakings)

it worked for our first son, after a truly dreadful first 6 months , and he's a rock now.

I guess like anything else I would attach the usual caveat to make sure there is not actually something wrong with him that requires him to wake in the night (feeding etc), but I would assume not

[tjinaz]

At 2 he should definitely be sleeping through the night.

Do you have a white noise generator aka the room humidifier? Do you have the same go to bed ritual every night? Bath then Bottle and a book etc? Toddlers are all about the routine.

We had this problem with my first and my wife would get up 2 or three times a night with bottles etc. Then one week momma got sick and it was daddy's turn. Well I am a pretty sound sleeper and the monitor wasn't turned up especially loud and so.... well needless to say she started sleeping through the night and has pretty much since. Sometimes you have to let them cry it out. If they think you will go in everytime they will cry until they get their expected outcome. If you don't go in they will tend to console themselves or just give up and go back to sleep. The exceptions are when they are sick or for some other reason they get out of their routine. That's my .02

[habernac]

Originally Posted by looooob

I know not everyone agree with this approach, but have you truly tried a version of 'crying it out' (including the middle of the night wakings)

it worked for our first son, after a truly dreadful first 6 months , and he's a rock now.

I guess like anything else I would attach the usual caveat to make sure there is not actually something wrong with him that requires him to wake in the night (feeding etc), but I would assume not

yep, gotta let 'em scream a little. We had a few long nights, but if you run in there at every peep, they're always going to expect it.

[Top Shelf]

Agreed on the letting them cry it out. We didn't want to do that with our daughter at first, it just broke our hearts to hear her cry so hard. But it only took about a week and each day the crying got less and less. This included going to bed and middle of the night too. It was tough, but after she started sleeping through the night, we wished we had done it 4 months earlier. For kid #2 who is on the way, I think we will be trying the cry it out technique a lot earlier.

Good luck though, I know it is frustrating.

[Locke]

A tumbler of brandy will usually knock the little goblins out cold.

[fredr123]

There's no magic to any of this. Some kids are probably just going to pick it up sooner than others.

Our daughter (first and only child) is 13 months old. She slept with us for way too long. It got to the point where she was so squirmy none of us could sleep properly. Putting her in her own crib for the first while was absolute hell. She cried so long and so hard she would throw up. Everywhere. Nothing like cleaning up a sobbing baby and changing bedding at 3 am.

My wife was sick one weekend so I resolved to not give in. I put our daughter to bed and shushed her for a few minutes until she calmed down. Then I left the room. Instant crying. I waited 10 minutes and then went back in. I shushed her to sleep, sang a bit (off key) and rubbed her back until she fell asleep. Never once did I pick her up. Then I'd leave. She'd wake up almost instantly and start crying again. I would wait 12 minutes this time and then repeat the process.

It was a long, long night. I got close to zero sleep other than a couple of quick 10 minute naps here and there. The next night, however, it went a little better. And then the night after that, even better. By the end of the week, our daughter was going to bed at a decent hour and only waking a few times during the night. She was more easily shushed back to sleep too.

Crying it out was really hard on my wife. She couldn't stand to see her precious cry like that but since she was sick and unable to get out of bed, she couldn't do anything about it.

Our daughter was about 6 months old the first time we tried to let her cry it out. It just wouldn't work for her then. When we finally had success she was about 10 months old. Bed time routines also helped us out. Our upstairs neighbour being out of town for the first weekend we tried it also helped too. Didn't feel as bad that our daughter screamed all night if there were no roommates to disturb.

Have patience. Be firm. Good luck.

[arsenal]

One word: NyQuil!!
No i don't have any kids, and yes I am joking

[photon]

Does he sleep right away in the car? It might be he's not getting enough sleep, you would think removing naps during the day would make nighttime sleep easier but it's the opposite, you might want to increase the amount of sleep he gets during the day, then he's not overtired.

Since he's so old I think anything you try is going to be tough; we never did the cry-it-out thing but a softer gentler version of it, but we started by just making sure he could fall asleep by himself without us in the room at 3-6 months.

If you can't handle the cryitout way, what I did is I would go in and console him or do whatever to get him to calm down, but slowly I would remove it. So for example I would start with the usual pick him up and hold him till he's almost asleep, but then I would hold him less and less.. I would put him down, he'd cry, I'd pick him up, he'd stop, I'd put him down, etc etc.. after 30 times eventually he got it and stopped crying.. then when he'd cry I would go into his room and just put my hand on his back instead of picking him up. Then just go into the room. Then just shush him from an open door, etc.. It took me weeks and weeks and weeks just to get rid of one nighttime waking but it worked.. might have been faster if I just let him cry for more than 5-10 minutes, but that was about my limit.

Read books, check parenting websites, every kid is different and it can be tough to find what works, but for us we decided early on that good sleep habits were the one thing we wanted to make sure we did well, and it worked out good; he's got really great sleep habits now (he's almost 4).

[Buff]

We have the same routine. Read books, sing songs, brush teeth and go to bed. We figured that he was getting wound up while singing songs so we tried to change the routine but he rejected the change. He is also in his terrible twos and doesn't sit down very long to read any book.

He is an active kid. We try to do lots of activities with him that get him active but too often it just makes him more wired. When he is less active he is less tired at the end of the day. Its a never ending battle.

We actually shouldn't complain. He has a cousin who is only 4 months older and is an even worse sleeper than our lil'feller. Unfortunately right now we're getting hit from two directions, as we have a 6 week old son as well, and he'll wake up once or twice a night to nurse, but my wife has to be extra careful with what she eats otherwise our infant will have a fussy night.

One thing to note, we went to Vegas in April for my wife's 30th and our son stayed at my wife's parents place. They had no problems with getting him so sleep and he slept through the night for them (4 nights total). Then we went to Vegas again in November for a conference (for my work and I got to bring my wife along) and the same thing happened, except for 7 nights this time.

There has also been a night or two where my parents would babysit for us or have him over and he'd go to bed for them without any problem and wouldn't wake up in the night either.

[habernac]

He knows you're coming to his rescue then.

Our issue is with naps. We're going to get another playpen for our house as he does nap at his grandparent's house in the play pen. He can move around too easily in his room so he just trashes the place instead of napping.

[Phanuthier]

Originally Posted by Buff

My kid doesn't sleep well through the night (he's 2 and a half years). Ever since birth. People say, oh, he'll grow out of it. Shyeah, when pigs fly out of my butt!

We've tried everything that we can think of

No daytime naps... makes things worse at bedtime.
Shorter daytime naps... see above
Earlier bedtime... nope.
let him play until he's ready to drop... worst. idea. ever.
gave him a bottle... now he's hooked on it and we've got another issue to deal with

He just lays in bed singing, playing etc. until he gets bored and then he cries and cries and cries. It usually takes him 2 hours to get to sleep from the time we lay him down in bed... and then middle of the night hits and he's awake again... crying, obviously. Usually he'll go right back to sleep but he needs some consoling which requires one of us to get up.

The odd thing is when he goes for a nap, he's all for it, somewhat excited, but at bed time he dreads it and and dreads it worse the more tired he is. he does have the odd stretch where he'll sleep through the night, sometimes several nights in a row, but one bad night and we go on a long stretch of bad nights.

What tricks do people use to get their kids to go to bed... and sleep the night through?

Hey, he sounds like me when I was younger!

I'm 23 and I'm still like that too. Just to give you hope.

[Buff]

One thing that is funny is his bed. We thought for sure we were going to have problems keeping him in the bed when he graduated from the crib. He will not leave his bed unless we've opened the door.

We've got noise makers that were attached to his crib, and now their attached to a stand next to the bed. It took him about a month to realize that he is able to reach out of bed to turn them on, but when we first moved him to the bed he was so excited to have a "big boy bed" that he wanted to go to sleep and we had about two weeks of him going to bed early and sleeping all night long.

[Buff]

Originally Posted by Phanuthier

Hey, he sounds like me when I was younger!

I'm 23 and I'm still like that too. Just to give you hope.

A co-worker says that her son never slept through the night. He is 15 now and she'll wake up to him getting a snack or watching late night tv because he still can't sleep long stretches. So I'm not worried that my son is abnormal because I've heard of many other kids who are the same, but it is frustrating because we lose sleep quite a bit.

My son is quite a bit like me. I'm a night hawk, and a horrible morning person.

[Reaper]

You want him to sleep well? Fill the humidifier on his bedside table with Kentucky Bourbon. After a while he'll want to take that humidifier everywhere with him.

[worth]

Originally Posted by Reaper

You want him to sleep well? Fill the humidifier on his bedside table with Kentucky Bourbon. After a while he'll want to take that humidifier everywhere with him.

I'm doing this when I get home.

[Jagger]

<sigh>

Well having four young children we have been though pretty much every gambit that a child can throw at you.

There really is no right answer with regards to this. Quite honestly, my wife and I have not had a full nights sleep in probably five or more years. We're used to it now.

I don't subscribe to the 'crying it out' method. I just don't like it. I know many experts say it is the way to go but there is just something about it that really bothers me. We're miserable, the child is miserable, it's just not a happy situation.

We've tried bathing before bed, smoothing music, reading, bedtime snack so they're not hungry etc. etc. None of them have worked with 100% success but they are all worth a try.

I think it's genetic. My wife and I are both complete night hawks, always have been. 1 to 2am is still relatively early for us even though I get up for work at 8am. We are so not morning people. Our kids have most definitely got the trait from us. It's our fault so we just have to deal with it!

Good luck and just roll with it is my advice. And just think you only have one child to worry about, try having four with this problem!!!

[looooob]

Originally Posted by Jagger

<sigh>


I don't subscribe to the 'crying it out' method. I just don't like it. I know many experts say it is the way to go but there is just something about it that really bothers me. We're miserable, the child is miserable, it's just not a happy situation.

!!!

I don't blame you, it is hard as heck, but at least for some kids it can work. for our son it was somewhat painful and we had to go through it 3 times because of minor set backs, but in the end it was a lifesaver -- he didn't sleep for more than 2 hours at a stretch for 6 months though, so we needed something or we were toast. I was up with him from 11pm-5 am most nights for a variety of reasons. Now I'd be surprised if he's out of bed 3 times a year, it really helped us with him and it was what we needed

at any rate we weren't as 'hard core' with our daughter in part b/c her sleep (although never great) was nowhere near as extreme, and as a result she still has sleep issues, but they are minor, we have accepted them and it works for us

[habernac]

I can't live without sleep. I grabbed earplugs, moved downstairs to the couch if it got too bad and waited for our son to deal with it. It took a very short period of time, and now everyone in the house is happier and well rested. Once you get past the point where they need to eat, etc in the middle of the night you've got to deal with it or be willing to live with the constant interruptions.